Aston Martin’s first electric car

December 06, 2017 by Denis Pombriant

In case you were wondering about the viability of the electric car market, you can relax. Aston Martin, the venerable carmaker which has been in the business of making high end luxury cars for over a century, today announced the RapideE a pure electric take on its road-eating 12-cylinder gas guzzler the Rapide.

The car on display at the announcement is a prototype so details can vary a lot between now and 2019 when the car becomes available in limited quantities. But the prototype has big batteries and twin motors for rear wheel drive that propels it from standing to 60 in about 4 seconds just as its namesake.

It looks like 2019 will be an important year in the auto world with GM and Ford already planning releases and Volvo’s earlier announcement that its entire fleet will run on batteries only of in hybrid mode. Speaking of which, Aston Martin plans to roll out at least 7 different models, which is 4 more models than now on offer. Seems like they’re bullish on their future.

If you’re wondering how this announcement helps regular citizen drivers the simple answer is that some innovations move top down because the invention and tooling is so expensive. You might think about this Aston Martin as pre-mass market but then again there was never a mass market for these cars.

An article in Architecture Digest noted that Williams Advanced Engineering assisted in the battery technology for the prototype. According to the article, Williams is a “British company that has extensive experience creating the gasoline/battery hybrid powertrain for the current Formula One racing series, as well as the battery-only powertrain for the new Formula E racing series.”

With all that, as we said at the beginning, if you’re wondering about the viability of the electric car market, you can relax.